Wright State basketball: Nagy elated but empathetic following upset

The shot and joyous post-game scrum made ESPN’s Top 10 plays of the day, coming in at No. 9.

But conspicuously absent from the happy huddle was coach Scott Nagy. He just rose calmly and started walking toward the Louisville bench as if he was starting his own handshake line.

“I guess I’ve just been in enough of those moments. Obviously, I’m happy for our kids. But my thought just goes to the opposing coach at that point — because I’ve been on the other side and know how much it hurts,” he said. “I’m not interested in celebrating in front of them and doing all of that. I’ve been through it enough.”

Not that he didn’t enjoy it — even though it was a tense affair.

“You go to places like that, and they assign you a policeman to walk to the bench, and he sits behind the bench. At one of the timeouts, I turned to him and said, ‘I would tell you not to go into coaching, but I’m guessing you’d tell me not to go into law enforcement,’” Nagy said with a chuckle.

“He laughed, but then after the game, he said, ‘I think maybe I want to go into coaching.’ I said, ‘Yeah, these are the days you like to be in it.’”

The win gave Nagy and his team a major bump in national respect. ESPN ran the result on its scoreboard ticker all afternoon and into the night: Wright State 73, Louisville 72.

The Cardinals may be in rebuilding mode, but they’re still one of the premier programs in the country, which means the upset belongs among the greatest in Raider history.

Asked where the win ranks among the 500-plus in his career, Nagy said: “I don’t know about for me. But for the school, those are big wins, exposure moments, the ESPN stuff. For me, sometimes the wins that nobody would ever think would be the bigger ones might the bigger ones.

“I’m to the point where I’m not surprised by what happens. The ball goes in, and we want to celebrate. But then not too long after that, I’m thinking about, ‘We’ve got to get ready for Bowling Green.’”

The Raiders, who host the Mid-American Conference school Tuesday, had a complete reversal of its double-overtime loss to Davidson four days earlier.

Against the Wildcats, they were shut out in the final 3:28 of regulation and were outscored, 4-0, to end up tied at 79.

Against the Cardinals, they trailed, 72-67, with 1:32 to go but scored the last six points.

Calvin’s clutch bucket came after the Raiders forced a tie-up with eight seconds left with the possession arrow in their favor.

“With no timeouts, I knew we had a pretty good mismatch with Brandon (Noel). He was the only one where we had a mismatch in terms of his size and who he had on him,” Nagy said.

“I was going to go that way, and then I was like, ‘What am I doing? We’ve got Trey. He can get his shot on anybody.’ We got the ball to him and let him play.”

Nagy could give instructions because the Raiders were inbounding the ball under their own basket near their bench.

The 6-foot-1 Calvin threw it in, got it back and then ended up with 6-10 Brandon Huntley-Hatfield on him after a switch.

Louisville’s Mike James, who is 6-5, also was close enough to get a hand up. But Calvin faded away near the foul-line elbow and knocked down the 18-footer.

It left his fingertips with just two-tenths of a second to go.

“Some people have a pump-fake, and it takes them so long to regather. Trey has a quick pump-fake, and it gets you off balance and gets you in the air. And then he can score. He just has real good control of his body,” Nagy said.

After starting 2-7 last season, the Raiders are 1-1 and have already built some early-season momentum.

“It was a good response by our guys — being down five with a minute and a half to go. Not giving in but continuing to play,” Nagy said.

“We’ve shown that the last two games now. I’d like to keep ourselves from those situations, but we’re also showing, if we get in them, we’re not going to panic.”

TUESDAY’S GAME

Bowling Green at Wright State, 7 p.m., ESPN+, 980